Boy oh boy, what a decade! Amiright?
I mean, think about it: back in 2006 when the Conservatives under Stephen...
Thursday, October 22, 2015 - 03:58 • Justin Mikulka
Harold Hamm isn’t the kind of guy you’d expect to be name dropping Ivy League schools. Born in Oklahoma, his education ended with his graduation from high school. Which didn’t stop him from becoming a multi-billionaire by building his own oil and gas fracking company, Continental Resources — a company that bills itself as “America’s Oil Champion.”
So for a self-made man from oil country, it wasn’t surprising to see a PowerPoint slide with the bullet points “Rigs, Rednecks, and Royalties” during his presentation this June at the annual Energy Information Administration conference in Washington, D.C. Although when he referred to the oil producing sections of the U.S. as “Cowboyistan” it didn’t get the laugh he was probably expecting.
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Monday, October 26, 2015 - 05:44 • Brendan Montague
EXCLUSIVE
Protesters locked themselves to a 500-tonne excavator and chained themselves together to blockade an open cast mine today on the family estate of Viscount Matt Ridley, a climate denier and prominent Tory peer.
More than a dozen climate change activists arrived before dawn at the Shotten coal mine, north of Newcastle upon Tyne, as part of what they called Operation Pixie, an audatious protest which was the product of weeks of clandestine planning.
Four activists clambered down a steep bank at the centre of the mine and climbed on top of the excavator, attaching themselves with bicycle D-Locks around their necks. Another team blocked the entrance to the Shotten mine by locking their wrists into concrete-laden drainage pipes.
6 Shares Sunday, October 25, 2015 - 04:58 • Guest
By Kaitlin Butler
The new U.S. oil and gas rush brings certain places to mind: the Midwest, California, the East Coast — Josh Fox’s Gasland, Governor Cuomo’s ban on fracking, the contentious battle over the Keystone XL pipeline.
Amidst mounting public controversy over fracking practices, pipeline spills and exploding oil trains, one corner of an often-overlooked state weighs heavily on our future. Utah: home to some of the most remote landscapes left in the lower 48 and a forgotten lynchpin to an all-out domestic energy bonanza.
46 Shares Saturday, October 24, 2015 - 08:58 • Farron Cousins
One year ago, 68% of American citizens believed that climate change was real. Today, that number has jumped to 76%, according to a new poll by UT Energy. That shift is not surprising, considering the record-breaking temperatures and widespread droughts and weather disruptions that have occurred in the last 12 months.
But what is most surprising about this new poll is the shift in attitudes of Republican voters.
84 Shares Saturday, October 24, 2015 - 05:58 • Guest
By Christopher Wright, University of Sydney and Daniel Nyberg, University of Newcastle
The upcoming Paris climate talks in December this year have been characterised as humanity’s last chance to respond to climate change. Many hope that this time some form of international agreement will be reached, committing the world to significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
And yet there are clear signs that the much-touted “solutions” of emissions reduction targets and market mechanisms are insufficient for what is required.
In our new book, Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporations: Processes of Creative Self-Destruction, we look at reasons why this has come about. We argue that businesses are locked in a cycle of exploiting the world’s resources in ever more creative ways.
319 Shares Friday, October 23, 2015 - 00:46 • Graham Readfearn
The Australian taxpayers' short, fractious, “on again, off again” relationship with climate science contrarian Bjorn Lomborg has come to an end.
Lomborg’s think tank, the Copenhagen Consensus Center, was once courted by the prior Australian government with an offer of $4 million of taxpayer funding to set up shop at a university. But this week it was revealed during parliamentary hearings that the government had quietly withdrawn the offer of funding.
14 Shares Thursday, October 22, 2015 - 11:14 • Justin Mikulka
When it comes to effective lobbying groups, the American Petroleum Institute has to be near the top of the list with its relentless quest to preserve oil company profits at all costs. However, with the current threat of a rail shutdown over the rail industry’s failure to implement positive train control (PTC), which would effectively shut down much of North Dakota’s Bakken oil production, the API isn’t getting involved.
Apparently they aren’t worried. As masters of the game of spinning stories for profit, perhaps the API knows a good bit of spin when it sees one.
7 Shares Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - 15:06 • Emma Gilchrist
In August 2014, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau made the trek to the tiny Gitga’at community of Hartley Bay, located along Enbridge’s proposed oil tanker route in northwestern B.C.
There, in the village of 200 people accessible only by air and water, he met with community elders and Art Sterritt, executive director of the Coastal First Nations.
“He came to Gitga’at because he wanted to make sure he was making the right decision in terms of Northern Gateway and being there certainly confirmed that,” Sterritt told DeSmog Canada on Tuesday.
“My confidence level went up immensely when Justin … visited Gitga’at.”
Two months before that visit, in May 2014, Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa that if he became prime minister “the Northern Gateway Pipeline will not happen.”
With Monday’s majority win by Trudeau, Sterritt — who retired three weeks ago from his role with Coastal First Nations — says he is “elated” and “Northern Gateway is now dead.”
0 Shares Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - 04:58 • Guest
By Blair Koch
A Colorado group with concerns about the environmental impacts of fracking are pushing for a fundamental change to the state’s legal system to give communities greater power over corporations.
Coloradans for Community Rights has set its sights on dismantling the legal system where state laws take precedence over local rules.
274 Shares Monday, October 19, 2015 - 20:53 • Carol Linnitt
Holy smokes.
Polls are in and Canadians across the country are expressing surprise at the strong win for the federal Liberal party.
While there’s much ink to be spilled over former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s reign, he’s likely locked in a bathroom now, so we’ll save that for another, less change-y time.
Canada, you have a new Prime Minister. I would say 'go home, you’re drunk.' But don’t, because you’re not. This is actually happening.
But wait, what is actually happening? We have a new majority government. Before the fun gets away with us, let’s do a quick reality check for what the Liberal Party and incoming Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have been promising all y’all on some of our top DeSmog Canada topics: climate, environment, science and transparency.
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